CHAPTER XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER

In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmesdale, Hester
Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the
clergyman reduced. His nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His
moral force was abased into more than childish weakness. It
grovelled helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual
faculties retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps
acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could have given
them. With her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from
all others, she could readily infer that, besides the legitimate
action of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had been
brought to bear, and was still operating, on Mr. Dimmesdale's
well-being and repose. Knowing what this poor fallen man had
once been, her whole soul was moved by the shuddering terror with
which he had appealed to her--the outcast woman--for support
against his instinctively discovered enemy. She decided,
moreover, that he had a right to her utmost aid. Little
accustomed, in her long seclusion from society, to measure her
ideas of right and wrong by any standard external to herself,
Hester saw--or seemed to see--that there lay a responsibility
upon her in reference to the clergyman, which she owned to no
other, nor to the whole world besides. The links that united her
to the rest of humankind--links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever
the material--had all been broken. Here was the iron link of
mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all
other ties, it brought along with it its obligations.

Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in
which we beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy.
Years had come and gone. Pearl was now seven years old. Her
mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast, glittering in its
fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object to the
townspeople. As is apt to be the case when a person stands out
in any prominence before the community, and, at the same time,
interferes neither with public nor individual interests and
convenience, a species of general regard had ultimately grown up
in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to the credit of human
nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play,
it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and
quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the
change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original
feeling of hostility. In this matter of Hester Prynne there was
neither irritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the
public, but submitted uncomplainingly to its worst usage; she
made no claim upon it in requital for what she suffered; she did
not weigh upon its sympathies. Then, also, the blameless purity
of her life during all these years in which she had been set
apart to infamy was reckoned largely in her favour. With nothing
now to lose, in the sight of mankind, and with no hope, and
seemingly no wish, of gaining anything, it could only be a genuine
regard for virtue that had brought back the poor wanderer to its paths.

It was perceived, too, that while Hester never put forward even
the humblest title to share in the world's privileges--further than to
breathe the common air and earn daily bread for
little Pearl and herself by the faithful labour of her hands--she
was quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man
whenever benefits were to be conferred. None so ready as she to
give of her little substance to every demand of poverty, even
though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of
the food brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought
for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch's
robe. None so self-devoted as Hester when pestilence stalked
through the town. In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether
general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found
her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate,
into the household that was darkened by trouble, as if its gloomy
twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold
intercourse with her fellow-creature There glimmered the
embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere
the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick chamber. It had
even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's bard extremity, across
the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his foot, while
the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of
futurity could reach him. In such emergencies Hester's nature
showed itself warm and rich--a well-spring of human tenderness,
unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest.
Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow
for the head that needed one. She was self-ordained a Sister of
Mercy, or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so
ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to
this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such
helpfulness was found in her--so much power to do, and power to
sympathise--that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A
by its original signification. They said that it meant Abel, so
strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength.

It was only the darkened house that could contain her. When
sunshine came again, she was not there. Her shadow had faded
across the threshold. The helpful inmate had departed, without
one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any
were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously.
Meeting them in the street, she never raised her head to receive
their greeting. If they were resolute to accost her, she laid
her finger on the scarlet letter, and passed on. This might be
pride, but was so like humility, that it produced all the
softening influence of the latter quality on the public mind.
The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying
common justice when too strenuously demanded as a right; but
quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal
is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its
generosity. Interpreting Hester Prynne's deportment as an appeal
of this nature, society was inclined to show its former victim a more
benign countenance than she cared to be favoured with, or, perchance,
than she deserved.

The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community, were
longer in acknowledging the influence of Hester's good qualities
than the people. The prejudices which they shared in common with
the latter were fortified in themselves by an iron frame-work of
reasoning, that made it a far tougher labour to expel them. Day
by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing
into something which, in the due course of years, might grow to
be an expression of almost benevolence. Thus it was with the men
of rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship
of the public morals. Individuals in private life, meanwhile,
had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they
had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of
that one sin for which she had borne so long and dreary a
penance, but of her many good deeds since. "Do you see that
woman with the embroidered badge?" they would say to strangers.
"It is our Hester--the town's own Hester--who is so kind to
the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the
afflicted!" Then, it is true, the propensity of human nature to
tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of
another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of
bygone years. It was none the less a fact, however, that in the
eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the
effect of the cross on a nun's bosom. It imparted to the wearer a
kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely amid all
peril. Had she fallen among thieves, it would have kept her safe. It was
reported, and believed by many, that an Indian had drawn his
arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it, and fell
harmless to the ground.

The effect of the symbol--or rather, of the position in respect
to society that was indicated by it--on the mind of Hester
Prynne herself was powerful and peculiar. All the light and
graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this
red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and
harsh outline, which might have been repulsive had she possessed
friends or companions to be repelled by it. Even the
attractiveness of her person had undergone a similar change. It
might be partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and
partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. It was a sad
transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair had either
been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a
shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. It was
due in part to all these causes, but still more to something
else, that there seemed to be no longer anything in Hester's face
for Love to dwell upon; nothing in Hester's form, though majestic
and statue like, that Passion would ever dream of clasping in its
embrace; nothing in Hester's bosom to make it ever again the
pillow of Affection. Some attribute had departed from her, the
permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such
is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the
feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered,
and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be
all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will
either be crushed out of her, or--and the outward
semblance is the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it
can never show itself more. The latter is perhaps the truest
theory. She who has once been a woman, and ceased to be so,
might at any moment become a woman again, if there were only the
magic touch to effect the transformation. We shall see whether
Hester Prynne were ever afterwards so touched and so
transfigured.

Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to be
attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned, in a
great measure, from passion and feeling to thought. Standing
alone in the world--alone, as to any dependence on society, and
with little Pearl to be guided and protected--alone, and
hopeless of retrieving her position, even had she not scorned to
consider it desirable--she cast away the fragment a broken
chain. The world's law was no law for her mind. It was an age
in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more
active and a wider range than for many centuries before. Men of
the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. Men bolder than these
had overthrown and rearranged--not actually, but within the
sphere of theory, which was their most real abode--the whole
system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient
principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a
freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of
the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would
have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatised by the
scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage, by the seashore,
thoughts visited her such as dared to enter no
other dwelling in New England; shadowy guests, that would have
been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, could they have
been seen so much as knocking at her door.

It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often
conform with the most perfect quietude to the external
regulations of society. The thought suffices them, without
investing itself in the flesh and blood of action. So it seemed
to be with Hester. Yet, had little Pearl never come to her from
the spiritual world, it might have been far otherwise. Then she
might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with Ann
Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious sect. She might, in
one of her phases, have been a prophetess. She might, and not
improbably would, have suffered death from the stern tribunals of
the period, for attempting to undermine the foundations of the
Puritan establishment. But, in the education of her child, the
mother's enthusiasm thought had something to wreak itself upon.
Providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to
Hester's charge, the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be
cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties. Everything
was against her. The world was hostile. The child's own nature
had something wrong in it which continually betokened that she
had been born amiss--the effluence of her mother's lawless
passion--and often impelled Hester to ask, in bitterness of
heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor little
creature had been born at all.

Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind with
reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth
accepting even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own
individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative,
and dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to speculation, though it may keep women
quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. She discerns, it may
be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole
system of society is to be torn down and built up anew. Then the
very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit,
which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified
before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and
suitable position. Finally, all other difficulties being
obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary
reforms until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier
change, in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she has
her truest life, will be found to have evaporated. A woman never
overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought. They are
not to be solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance to
come uppermost, they vanish. Thus Hester Prynne, whose heart had
lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clue in
the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable
precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild
and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort
nowhere. At times a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul,
whether it were not better to send Pearl at once to Heaven, and
go herself to such futurity as Eternal Justice should provide.

The scarlet letter had not done its office.
Now, however, her interview with the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale,
on the night of his vigil, had given her a new
theme of reflection, and held up to her an object that appeared
worthy of any exertion and sacrifice for its attainment. She had
witnessed the intense misery beneath which the minister
struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle.
She saw that he stood on the verge of lunacy, if he had not
already stepped across it. It was impossible to doubt that,
whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting of
remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand
that proffered relief. A secret enemy had been continually by
his side, under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had
availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering
with the delicate springs of Mr. Dimmesdale's nature. Hester
could not but ask herself whether there had not originally been a
defect of truth, courage, and loyalty on her own part, in
allowing the minister to be thrown into position where so much
evil was to be foreboded and nothing auspicious to be hoped. Her
only justification lay in the fact that she had been able to
discern no method of rescuing him from a blacker ruin than had
overwhelmed herself except by acquiescing in Roger
Chillingworth's scheme of disguise. Under that impulse she had
made her choice, and had chosen, as it now appeared, the more
wretched alternative of the two. She determined to redeem her
error so far as it might yet be possible. Strengthened by years
of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so
inadequate to cope with Roger Chillingworth as on that night,
abased by sin and half-maddened by the ignominy
that was still new, when they had talked together in the
prison-chamber. She had climbed her way since then to a higher
point. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himself
nearer to her level, or, perhaps, below it, by the revenge which
he had stooped for.

In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former husband, and
do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on
whom he had so evidently set his gripe. The occasion was not
long to seek. One afternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired
part of the peninsula, she beheld the old physician with a basket
on one arm and a staff in the other hand, stooping along the
ground in quest of roots and herbs to concoct his medicine
withal.